The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays, Vol. 2 (of 2) — Context and Discussion

hurch was cursed. Feeling and emotion and imagination do all the work of the world according to him; and when he is asked to reason and to demonstrate, he answers, with the lofty air of one secure of the better way, that he Loves, and that Love sees further and more clearly than reason.

As the strong-minded woman is a mistake among women, so is the gushing man among men. Fluid, unstable, without curb to govern or rein to guide, he brings into the masculine world all the mental frailties of the feminine, and adds to them the force of his own organization as a man. Whatever he may be he is a disaster; and at all times is associated with failure. He is the revolutionary leader who gets up abortive risings--the schemer whose plans run into sand--the poet whose books are read only by schoolgirls, or lie on the publisher's shelves uncut, as his gushingness bubbles over into twaddle or exhales itself in the smoke of obscurity--the fanatic whose faith is more madness than philosophy--the man of society who is the butt of his male companions and the terror of his lady acquaintances--the father of a family which he does his best, unintentionally, to ruin by neglect, which he calls nature, or by eccentricity of training, which he calls faith--and the husband of a woman who either worships him in blind belief, or who laughs at him in secret, as heart or head preponderates in her character. In any case he is a man who never finds the fitting time or place; and who dies as he has lived, with everything about him incomplete.

A vast amount of poetry has always been thrown round that special time of a woman's life when,

Standing with reluctant feet Where the brook and river meet,

she is no longer a child and yet not quite a woman--that transition time between the closed bud and the full-blown flower which we in England express by the term, among others, of Sweet Seventeen. Without meaning to be sentimental, or to envelope things in a golden haze wrought by the imagination only and nowhere to be found in fact, we cannot deny the peculiar charm which belongs to a girl of this age, if she is nice, and neither pert nor silly. Besides, it is not only what she is that interests us, but what she will be; for this is the time when the character is settling into its permanent form, so that the great thought of every one connected with her is, How will she turn out? Into what kind of woman will the girl develop? and, What kind of life will she make for herself?

Certainly Sweet Seventeen may be a most unlovely creature, and in fact she often is; a creature hard and forward, having lost the innocence and obedience of childhood and having gained nothing yet of the tact and grace of womanhood; a creature whose hopes and thoughts are all centred on the time when she shall be brought out and have her fling of flirting and fine dresses with the rest. Or she may be only a gauche and giggling schoolgirl, with a mind as narrow as her life, given up to the small intrigues and scandals of the dormitory and the playground--a girl who scamps her lessons and cheats her masters; whose highest efforts of intellect are shown in the cleverness with which she can break the rules of the establishment without being found out; who thinks talking at forbidden times, peeping through forbidden windows, giving silly nicknames to her companions and teachers, and telling silly secrets with less truth than ingenuity in them, the greatest fun imaginable, and all the greater because of the spice of rebellion and perversity with which her folly is dashed. Or she may be a mere tomboy, regretting her sex and despising its restraints; cultivating schoolboy slang and aping schoolboy habits; ridiculing her sisters and disliked by her companions, while thinking girlhood a bore and womanhood a mistake in exact proportion to its feminality. Or she may be a budding miss, shy and awkward, with no harm in her and as little good--a mere sketch of a girl, without a leading line as yet made out or the dominant colour so much as indicated.